Portrait drawing at the Provo Farmer’s Market is fun. If you’re local, you should come by! I’m only charging a couple bucks as I’m still new at this; within the next week or two I’ll start slowly raising the price.

Shortcut Update

Pretty fun to see a graphic novella come together for my first time.

I’m excited to let people read it—you can buy it from me already at fairs and conventions—and I will at some point in time make it available to read via PDF for free. However, the latter option is going to have to wait.

Unfortunately, though I have tried to make it known that this is not the novel on which I’ve worked with my publisher for the last few years, people are naturally busy and don’t have time to read every detail of my posts.

Already when I run into people in person who follow my blog I’m getting comments such as, “I saw the cover for the book you’re doing with Shadow Mountain!”

Alas!

I certainly don’t blame anyone. If I were in their shoes I would probably make the same mistake.

But this project was just a blitz done between drafts. It’s a fun novella, but it’s not a full and finished novel, and I don’t want to present my work as such.

Until I have more novellas and things with which to totally confuse people (or at least until I start releasing illustrations for my full-length novel) we’ll be keeping “Shortcut” on the convention tables only. You’re welcome to grab a copy there!

Provo Farmer’s Market

Provo Farmer’s Market

Here’s one place you can grab it…

As of last week I am at the Provo Farmer’s Market each Saturday from 9 AM to 2 PM. I’ll be selling prints etc., and I’m also learning the art of onsite caricature drawing. Come sit! Last week I did them for free as I’m brand new at this. Eventually I’ll start charging. Not sure when.

My Belated Blog Hop from Merdith

My good friend, Meridth Gimbel, asked me about a month ago if I would like to participate in her blog hop. There’s a particular reason why I’m still waiting to answer the interview questions, but for the time being I do want to thank her for including me and show you where you can check out her blog!

Here are a couple of panels from where she makes the decision to climb.

(As a reminder, this is just a side project that I’m doing in my free time. It’s not associated with my publisher)

We’re closing in on the end. I should have all the revisions made soon, and then I think I’m going to bind these together by hand.

The way I think I’m going to release these at Salt Lake Comic Con is that I may hand-stitch them together, along with several portfolio paintings.

They’ll be signed and numbered in a limited edition release. Most likely there will not be more than 40 all together, so if you’d like to buy one and you can’t be there, be sure to let me know. I can provide a way for you to pay by credit card and I will ship it to you.

I’m debating on whether or not to release this graphic novella as a standalone novella or as part of a collection, which would include a few of my paintings as well.

For SLC Comic Con, most likely it will be a standalone, but afterwards I’m leaning towards the other option.

A question for you, if I were to make a coffee-table quality collection of my work, which would include paintings, sketches, this graphic novella, and had a nice cover, would you be interested in purchasing a copy? If so, let me know in the comments below.

Things are almost finished. I’ve just got a few more frames of Act III left, and then I’ll be working on Act I. (We’re not going in chronological order when we illustrate.)

Getting this ready for Comic Con is gonna be tight. I was hoping to paint a unique book cover for the novella, but it’s gonna be hard right now. Act I is going to take at least the first half of next week, if not the whole week entirely. That leaves me with only a few days to revise and layout in Adobe InDesign before we need to go to press.

If I don’t have time to do a full cover, I think I’m going to put a few of my other paintings in the book so that there’s some finished work for would-be purchasers as well.

This year at Salt Lake Comic Con I will be located in the Artists’ Alley, seated at table “o1”.

As a reminder, this is just a short story that I’m doing on my own. I started it just a few weeks ago and it should be finished by next Friday at the latest.

Originally I was going to make “Short Cut” the story of a mother finding her son. But as I worked out the story I felt it was more fun to make it a sister searching for her brother.

Here she is on the staircase! This is the first panel where she’s simply wandering up on her own.

I’m excited for you to read this little short story. Should be fun.

One thing I just gotta mention: it is so fun to finally bring all the different areas which I’ve studied together. Over the last four years I spent the majority of my time learning how to write creatively. It is much harder for me than drawing–by a long shot! And the majority of my art skills are in finished paintings–i.e. book covers. So, when I reach the end of creating the interiors we’ll get to give that part of the process a go. And right now I’m putting together comic panels and doing finished pencil drawings, a skill I’ve wanted to develop for years.

Really fun to see this all coming together for the first time. And it’s a good little warm up for the larger project I’m working on.

Anyway, check back later. “Short Cut” should be ready to go by the Salt Lake City Comic Con. Looking forward to seeing you all there.

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About this Blog

I'm a teacher, storyteller, husband, and father. My last name sounds just like "Zeus", but with a "B". This site is a place to share my (ultra messy) life with you--a journal of the journey so to say. The blog focuses around a few things, but storytelling is huge, and one day I hope to release a heroic epic tale.

Short Stories Progress

Current Rough Draft

22% Complete

650 of 3,000 words

Progress on my current rough draft. No publisher yet.

Short Stories Finished

Ready to submit to publishers

0% Complete

of 30,000 words

(Word count is just a guess!)

Short Story Touchdowns

Picked up by a publisher etc.

0% Complete

of 9,000 words

Three accepted submissions! (Word count is just a guess.)

Novella Progress

My next full-length novella

0% Complete

of 30,000 words

Like WESTLY, but new!

Epic Story

Stage 1 of 5 - Rough Layout/World Building

0% Complete

of 1,000,000 words

An epic and massive adventure. This one could take decades to finish! (Word count is just a wild guess for now.)

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